Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Bonus Episode: Will the Middle East Be Unrecognizable? - with Jared Cohen

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

Jared Cohen is Co-Head of the Office of Applied Innovation and President of Global Affairs at Goldman Sachs. He also serves on the Management Committee of the firm. Jared is also the most senior Goldman executive to visit Israel since October 7. But Jared did not just visit Israel – and meet with a range of senior Israeli political leaders and security officials – he also was in Ramallah, in the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority officials and Jordan – just before Jordan participated in the extraordinary multi-national defense of Israel, despite tense relations between the Israeli and Jordanian governments. And since then, Jared has traveled extensively throughout the Persian Gulf States, where he has a long history of deep relationships. It was interesting to get a fresh take from Jared on this region in transition. Prior to joining Goldman, Jared was an executive at Alphabet, before which he was Google’s first Director of Ideas and Chief Advisor to Google’s then CEO and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Jared is a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including "One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide," "Children of Jihad," "The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Business, and our Lives," which he co-authored with Eric Schmidt, and, most recently, "Life After Power: Seven Presidents and their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House," which you can order here: https://tinyurl.com/5xm8v7ft OR https://tinyurl.com/2ua6mzjd Paper discussed in this episode: "The rise of geopolitical swing states" -- https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-rise-of-geopolitical-swing-states.html

It's 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 19th here in New York City. It's 5 o'clock p.m. on Sunday in Israel. Jared Cohn is co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation. He's also president of global affairs at Goldman Sachs. He also serves on the management committee of the firm. Jared's also the most senior Goldman executive to visit Israel since October 7th. But Jared did not just visit Israel and meet with a range of senior Israeli political leaders and security officials while he was there. He was also in Ramallah in the West Bank, where he met with leaders of the Palestinian Authority, including the just sworn in prime minister, and he traveled to Jordan just before Jordan had participated in an extraordinary multinational defense of Israel from the attack from Iran,

despite tense relations between the Israeli and Jordanian governments. And since then, Jared has traveled extensively throughout the Persian Gulf states, where he has a long history of deep relationships and a pretty original analysis of what's happening in those countries. So it was interesting to get a fresh take from Jared on this region in transition, which in many respects will be unrecognizable to a lot of our listeners, at least in the way that Jared describes it. I should note that in this conversation, we do not discuss the very recent developments in Iran with the downing of a helicopter that was transporting Iran's president. We will get

into that conversation in the next episode, which is with Haviv Retigur. As for this conversation, prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Jared Cohen was an executive at Alphabet, or Google, before which he was Google's first director of ideas, their in-house think tank, and chief advisor to Google's then CEO and executive chairman, Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010, Jared was in government. He served as a member of the Secretary of State's policy planning staff, in which he was a close advisor both to Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton, when each was Secretary of State. He served in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Jared is also a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including 100 Days of Silence, America and the Rwanda Genocide, and Children of Jihad,

and The New Digital Age, Transforming Nations, Business, and Our Lives, which he co-authored with Eric Schmidt, and most recently, Life After Power, Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. I should note for Life After Power, which we wind up having a conversation about at the end of today's episode, when Jared was in Israel, he gave copies of that book to people he was meeting with. And it turns out that President Bougie Herzog, the president of Israel, recently said in an interview that this was the book he was reading right now. I wouldn't read too much into that, life after power, but it is interesting. Jared Cohn on Will the Middle East Be Unrecognizable?

This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, my longtime friend, thought partner, Jared Cohn from Goldman Sachs, previously of Google and Alphabet and many other interesting things. Jared, good to be with you. Dan, thanks for having me. This is long overdue. Long overdue. I mean, we talk all the time.

So this conversation is like interspersed in the middle of many conversations. You know what it is? It's dinner without the food. Yeah. Dinner without the food or dinner with a microphone. How about that? Okay. So Jared, as I mentioned in the introduction, you recently returned from a trip to Israel. It was the first time you've been to Israel in a while, obviously, certainly the first time you'd been there since October 7th. And you came with a range of, I think, pretty unique perspectives, not the least of which is your perspective from the Gulf States, where you have a lot of relationships, and we'll get to that. But even the way you did the trip, which is not how most people I know who travel to Israel these days travel, which is you started

with Jordan and Ramallah in the West Bank and then wound up in Israel. So can you talk a little bit about why you decided to do this trip, the sequencing of the trip, as I just referred to, and then I want to get into the meat of what you learned. Absolutely, Dan. And you're right. I sequenced this in an unusual way. As you mentioned, I started in Jordan and then was in Ramallah and then spent the balance of the trip all throughout Israel. And post-October 7th, I'd taken two trips to the balance of the trip all throughout Israel. And, you know, post-October 7th, I'd taken two trips to the Gulf before the trip to Israel, and I'd been to the Gulf subsequently since that trip to Israel. And it's the most significant geopolitical test that this

region has had in quite some time. And certainly since you've had this paradigmatic shift where the Middle East, once the center of geopolitical gravity, you know, was experiencing an international change where, you know, post-COVID everything shifted to Washington and Beijing. And it's impossible to understand what's happening in this region by only going to Israel. It's also impossible to understand this region only by spending time in the Arab countries. Similarly, it's impossible to understand the region only by spending time in the kind of usual set of wealthy Gulf countries that everybody does business in, which is why I also wanted to get to Jordan. It's why I also wanted to get to Ramallah. It's why I went to Iraq after October

7th to get right to the Iran-Iraq border to get briefed on some of the proxy activities. My whole formula and methodology is talk to everybody, get as many different perspectives as possible, assume everybody who's talking to you has their own kind of intellectual or political agenda, and then you have to put it together like a puzzle. Okay, so let's talk about that puzzle. First, what you learned in Israel, I guess what surprised you based on what you learned, and then let's talk about the puzzle, the other pieces of the puzzle. First, what surprised you? I mean, as you know, we have a lot of people on this podcast who either are living in Israel or people who are working on policies that relates to Israel, the Middle East and the war who may not be in Israel, but most of our guests are from Israel.

What did you learn in Israel? What surprised you? I think there's, first of all, there's so many things that surprised me. And it almost depends on which hat I'm wearing, right? There's things that surprised me as a Jewish person living in New York. There's certain things that surprised me looking at the region geopolitically. There's certain things that surprised me kind of looking at it all through the lens of business. I think for your listeners, I'll start with the kind of emotional reaction just as a Jewish person in New York. Post-October 7th, I'd gotten so used to, you know, seeing hostage posters that had been defaced and torn down, you know, repulsed every time I saw it. But you sort of get these things, I don't want to say they get normalized, but you get used to seeing it. And it just becomes part of the day-to-day

kind of emotional roller coaster. And, you know, the first thing that I did when I got to Israel is I had an opportunity to meet a couple of the parents of hostages, which I thought was an important place to start. But then I did a quick visit as well to Hostage Square, it's right near the Goldman Sachs office. And I had a deeply emotional reaction to being there for all the obvious reasons. This is the Host square in Tel Aviv, the main hostage square. Yeah. But the reason is I saw an entire wall, you know, with dozens and dozens of hostage posters. And I found myself looking to see where they had been defaced or vandalized. And I realized it was the first time since October 7th that I'd seen dozens of these posters perfectly intact. And it just gave me a very significant and I had a pretty

profound emotional reaction just as a Jewish person. That contrast was quite striking. I would say geopolitically, I think the thing that I was struck by is we see these protests in Israel, we'd watch them the year before the war. And I think that there was just a misunderstanding that I had and that I think many people still have, which is, you know, what I found is a country where Israelis, regardless of what they think of their government, and they have any number of reasons to protest, that there's a tremendous amount of harmony around the prosecution of the war and right to left, you know, all levels of the socioeconomic period, ultra-Orthodox to atheists and everything

in between, regardless of the party, I found a country, you know, kind of deeply unified around the twin objectives of getting all the hostages back, including the bodies and dismantling Hamas's capabilities in the Gaza Strip such that they can't reconstitute. And that level of harmony juxtaposed with the sort of divisions that we saw post-October 7th was quite striking. You mean the divisions post-October 7th was quite striking. You mean the divisions pre-October 7th, the peak of judicial reform? Correct. And recognizing that Israelis can walk and chew gum at the same time. Those divisions can still feel very pronounced, can still be debated, and yet the country can be really unified

around the response to October 7th and the goals and what needs to be done. The other thing that I was struck by, you know, again, I had mentioned that, you know, right after October 7th, I'd sort of done the, a pretty comprehensive tour of the region, including in Iraq. I spent an entire day on the Iran-Iraq border. My view post-October 7th was that, you know, Iran was the short-term winner of the war because they'd managed to create this new normal around their proxy groups and what they're willing to do today and in the future, and that they'd sort of blown through any idea that there's meaningful red lines to constrain them. When I was in Israel, I had a chance to get up to the north right near Metula. You know, the IDF had taken me up there. Actually, it was on the Friday that was the day that

everybody was initially bracing for the Iranian response. You know, I'd gone around the West Bank with the Shin Bet, and I'd gotten sort of a number of other briefings. And I left with this sort of profound feeling that Iran has a pretty significant tactical advantage on a number of these different fronts, which is highly problematic. And, you know, whether it's in, you know, with the Houthis recognizing that so much of that has to be outsourced to the international community, and it's proving very hard to degrade them and counter them, and it's resulting in the port of Eilat being closed for a sustained period of time. When you're up in the north, you know, you really see firsthand the 80,000 Israelis that have been evacuated and the fact that Hezbollah has managed to create and trigger that outcome without moving back to the

Latani River, without dismantling any of the villages in the south of Lebanon, and without starting a sort of full scale war, the likes of which we saw in July of 2006. You see the impact of the full land corridor that five Shia Arab militia groups in Iraq have created from Iran all the way to Syria and Lebanon, you get briefed and sort of develop an understanding of the proxy activities, you know, near the Golan in Syria and so forth. And you just get this sense of just how encircled Israel is by all of Iran's different tentacles. And it sheds light on why, across the board throughout Israel, the sentiment that you have to deal with the head of the octopus, first and foremost, and you can't just keep beating back the tentacles is such a, you know,

sort of pronounced and sort of, you know, dominant sentiment that so many Israelis, you know, feel from my conversations. And so look, the other thing, and Dan, you and I have spoken about this before, this shift from deterrence to needing to deal comprehensively with the Iranian threat, again, not just the proxy groups, but the Iranian threat as sort of defined by, you know, a state sponsor of terrorism. I didn't leave with the impression that this was fleeting. I didn't lead with the impression that this was temporary or reactive or emotional. I left with the impression that this is a paradigmatic shift inside of Israel. As we said, you spent time with Palestinians on the ground in the West Bank before you were within the green line,

before you crossed into what Israel proper, quote unquote, without citing names, but you did meet with senior Palestinians and Palestinian authority. What was your sense of their reaction to October 7th? And what I mean by that is, did you sense, because I've been struck and we've talked a lot about this on this podcast, that at best they're silence and at worst they're public expression of sympathies for Hamas and what Hamas did on October 7th. Was your impression that that reflected how they really felt? Or it's not how they really felt, but for the time being, that's what they have to say they really feel.

And that's more just public positioning. Yeah, no, look, it was an interesting time to be there. I was there during Ramadan, and I don't mind saying what I did that I was either the first American or one of the first Americans to meet the new Palestinian prime minister for no other reason than he had just been sworn in right before I met with him. Don't don't don't don't say it was just just luck. It was just timing. Say he got sworn in and he said, I want to meet with Jared Cohn. If you say so, Dan. The first official meeting must be with Jared Cohn. And look, what I would say was interesting about that conversation, he was very, I actually tried to, in the conversation, kind of get into some of the more geopolitical issues and some of the

headwinds and some of the more sensitive topics. And he really wanted to focus on, you know, delivering for the Palestinian people. It was like a very sort of, you know, almost kind of technocratic conversation. That was kind of my takeaway. You know, outside of Israel, a lot of people want to make this Bibi's war. From my, again, my conversations, I'd be hard pressed to sort of describe this as Bibi's war. I talked to many members of the opposition and people who can't stand Bibi and still can't stand Bibi, war. I talked to many members of the opposition and people who can't stand Bibi and still can't stand Bibi, but share his views about what needs to be done. But I think the fact that it's such a tense relationship between him and others in the region creates a kind of convenient argument for why nothing can be done. And that was sort of my takeaway

from my conversations in Ramallah, which is this you know, this kind of this prevailing view that we can't do anything. You know, the leadership is not a leadership that we can we can talk to and just kind of absolving themselves of any kind of responsibility and then kind of focusing more on the conversation around around the West Bank. What was interesting is, you know, I got two tours of the West Bank through two very different vantage points. You know, the first was in Ramallah. And the people that took me around was sort of a security detail provided by the PA. And one of the people who took me around had actually been in Israeli prison for 11 years and was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. And then the next day, the Shin Bet took me around the West Bank. And let's just say I got different visuals and different explanations. And I think that's part of what's important, because the reason to do these tours around these areas is you're getting a perspective, but it's important to understand in different

contexts what visuals go with which explanations. And so to be able to do the West Bank through those two very different vantage points in sequence with each other, it just gave me a sense of what the narrative looks like and how the narrative evolves as the context changes. Okay. So since you were in Israel and you go to the Gulf, I think every three months or so, Riyadh, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, I mean, you bounce around all over the place. So you just returned from the Gulf, I think specifically Saudi, and you have a lot of incredible relationships in those countries. What do you think their perspective is? What is their actual perspective on the war, the stakes of the war, and where this

is going? Separate from what they say publicly, because we know what they say publicly, and I think many of us know that what they say publicly and what they're actually aspiring for are two different things. Yeah, look, the first thing that I would say is, we used to be able to lump all these countries together as kind of a monolithic Gulf, you're seeing a real kind of de regionalization of the Gulf countries in the sense that, you know, you have a handful of them that are economically thriving, and they're interested in identity that's unique to them. And so the first thing that I would say is, the perspectives vary country to country. October 7, and the subsequent war, it happened at a time where frankly, these countries, again, Saudi,

Qatar, UAE have been enjoying a kind of economic renaissance, you know, for I've been going there for decades, and you ask them, what do you want? It's always been some version of the same thing, which is we want our economic interest to drive the geopolitics, not the other way around. And they were stuck in this global war on terror framework. And then COVID is what kind of unlocked them from that. And again, it shifted this focus to Washington and Beijing. And for the first time, they find themselves in more of a sort of, you know, geopolitical driver's seat. And what that looks like, and how that manifests itself in each of the three, you know, countries, it really varies. When the war happened, it was the first, you know, significant, probably the most significant geopolitical test for the region, since these countries had, you know, sort of embarked on

this economic journey. And I think what reveals itself and it's pronounced by these three countries is that the Middle East is a tale of two countries. You have countries that have the luxury of their economic futures being totally untethered from the geopolitical baggage of the past. So again, that's Saudi, Qatar, UAE, and countries that are deeply intertwined with the geopolitical messiness of the past, right? Those are the countries besieged by Iranian proxies adjacent to Israel. And then Israel is kind of a hybrid of the two. So when you talk to these countries about they all want the war to stop, I don't get

the sense that it is as ideological as it has been in the past. I actually feel pretty strongly that it's not as ideological as it has been in the past. I know the sort of young leadership of a lot of these countries, it's a different generation. I'm not saying there's no ideological piece of it. I'm just saying it's a different generation. What these countries want is the sort of economic, they're focused largely on an economic agenda and an economic agenda in service of what they're trying to do geopolitically. And so I find them less zealous about this. It's a massive disruption to what they're trying to do. It's not a disruption that's really impacting them, but they want to see a more economically integrated Middle East.

It benefits them significantly. So that's the first point. That it's less ideological, I agree with you. It's certainly the case with some of these countries relative to where they were not that long ago. It's less ideological. On the other hand, I do think there is something ideological, which is their fear of Muslim extremism. So that is ideological. They are trying to modernize and reform, and they face a threat from the Muslim Brotherhood,hood call it which is this extreme version or model or expression of sunni islam and in many of these countries the muslim brotherhood has been or could be a threat to these monarchies to their governments and they see in hamas a sort of

cousin not even a distant cousin a sibling not a first cousin than a sibling of cousin, not even a distant cousin, a sibling, not a first cousin, then a sibling of the Muslim Brotherhood. So while they're sympathetic in a sense to the Palestinian people, quote unquote, my experience is they have zero tolerance for Hamas. And again, in many respects, it's about self-preservation that they see Hamas as Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Brotherhood as Hamas. And so and they have an ideological hostility to what that represents. That's 100% true. But that's true in Jordan. That's true in Egypt as well, which are, you know, geographically proximate. You ask yourself the question, what's new this time around? The social media piece of this is it's not that social media

hasn't been around in the past, but the algorithmic nature of this brand of social media is very, very different. And so, you know, what all these countries are worried about, and look, this is less the case in UAE and Qatar, which have small populations, and it's much more, you know, an issue in, you know, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Egypt, but the social mediafication of this war is a huge issue. You have more hours of footage being uploaded to various platforms than you have probably seconds or minutes of the entire war itself. And it does a couple of things. One, it's injecting identity politics into the street. And then two, it's creating significant momentum that could manifest itself in kind of a new chapter of radicalization with a very different generation of extremists. One that

didn't know that there was an Israel-Palestinian issue until October 7th. They learned algorithmically and much faster and in very binary ways without kind of the benefit of hearing other viewpoints. And I always like to remind people, you know, we should be quite worried about this, not just in the Middle East, but worried about it in Europe, worried about it in the U.S. I mean, the 9-11 hijackers, they were radicalized by watching far less content with no algorithmic dimension of people being killed in Bosnia in the 90s. And we fought against violent extremism for two decades as a result of radicalization that happened pre-social media, pre the types of algorithms that we see today. So they're very

worried about this. They're also worried that, look, this is a time where they're trying to attract investment into their country. This is a time where each of these countries has a different thesis around the role that they want to play in sort of the future of artificial intelligence. In general, the spread of extremism, geopolitical turmoil, anything that spooks people from the region, not just in terms of traveling there, but socially, economically causes them to look, you know, elsewhere. All of this is antithetical to what the sort of wealthy Gulf Arab countries are trying to do. And frankly, even the less wealthy countries in the region have gotten some of the kind of trickle down benefits of these Gulf countries getting very wealthy and

looking more towards a future of economic integration. So they're suffering as well. It's just it's a more complicated problem for them because one, they don't have the resources that immunize them from what's happening geopolitically and to the identity politics are much worse in those countries. Of course, Jordan, Egypt is what I'm referring to. One senior Saudi official said to me late last year, when I pressed him on, because I was struck that it seemed that Saudi was as committed to normalization with Israel as it was before October 7th. Obviously, the path to it is a little more complicated, but they seemed as committed. And I was asking, I was pressing him about that. And he said, MBS, Mohammed bin Salman has laid out what Saudi Arabia calls the

2030, meaning the year 2030, the 2030 goals. And he says, you need to understand those goals cannot be achieved without normalization with Israel. That is to say, if the Arab world has not normalized with Israel, if there's a risk of a flare up at any given moment where you can have some kind of regional war, it would foment so much instability that it makes our pursuit of these goals impossible. So normalization is not just like a nice to have. It's actually a necessary input to achieving these goals that Saudi has laid out for itself. I think it's completely consistent with what I hear when I talk to them. What's interesting is, you know, in private, they're no less encouraging about the idea that normalization will happen. Exactly as you say, it's just it's a more complicated path and the timeline has probably changed.

The other thing that's happened is, you know, Saudi's accumulated a lot more leverage in whatever a deal might eventually look like. Right. You know, they're essential. It's now clear that the Israel-Palestinian, you know sort of the multi-generational conflict it can't be managed anymore there needs to be everyone sort of agrees you know at least among the regional players that you now need some kind of a comprehensive solution you hear that being talked about in the arab countries i hear less of it in israel right now because of this sort of immediate goals and the war but nobody's refuting the fact that Saudi normalization has to be a central feature of any kind of a two-state solution or comprehensive plan. And so if you're Saudi Arabia, you hold a lot of cards right now. The issue with all of this is the U.S. election. You know, as you look at this war, the way I would sort of describe it is you have kind of a too soon,

too far problem. The election is too soon in the sense that nobody's going to take any significant risk to bring about a kind of resolution here without getting more information about who wins in November, particularly when we know that the sort of posture of the Biden administration towards Iran and the posture of the Trump folks towards Iran is very, very different. But it's too long in the sense that this is, you know, a pretty long runway to endure a pretty volatile status quo. And so what we're looking at is, you know, five, six, seven months of pretty significant instability, where when you look at the current situation, the way I would describe it is those that have the capacity don't have the will in this context, and those that have the will don't have the capacity in this context.

And so a lot can happen between now and the election, but I'm deeply skeptical that you're going to see any country that has the capacity really put themselves out there and take a sort of swing for the fences type risk here to bring a resolution to this without the information that we get the first Tuesday of November. With these Gulf states, you've described them as, I think, or at least some of them as the like ink states, like Saudi ink, you know, Emirati ink, Qatar ink. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that and how that factors into this broader discussion we're having? It really comes down to what matters to these countries, first and foremost. So you're right. Yes, they care about the plight of the Palestinians. They care about a resolution

to all these issues. But at the end of the day, they're sovereign countries. They have huge economic goals that they're pursuing, And they want to set a geopolitical agenda on their terms, not have messy geopolitics force their hand, and they have the resources to do it. Now, if I sort of reflect back on if you take Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE is just sort of three examples. Historically, you know, the geopolitics was driving, you know, all their sort of economic interests. And so the most important conversations that were happening in each of these countries were about geopolitics, you know, war on terror related and so forth. And then there was sort of a sovereign wealth fund, you know, off in the corner that was managing the endowment. And so you could sort of,

you want to be flippant about it, you could say these used to be countries with sovereign wealth funds. And today, you know, they're sort of sovereign wealth funds that are sort of serving as an economic machinery that are powering the ambitions of countries that we should no longer think of as Middle Eastern countries, right? So you have Saudi Inc, you have Qatar Inc, you have UAE Inc that happen to be located in the Middle East, but each of these countries is pursuing a massive, massive agenda. And the most professionalized economic machinery they have is either their sovereign wealth fund, or in the case of the UAE, an ecosystem of sovereign wealth funds and their ambitions. There's sort of consistent categories across all of them. Each of them is investing in a modern

identity and it varies country to country, right? So in the case of Saudi Arabia, it's building a modern private sector for the 36 million people who live in Saudi Arabia. So as a G20 country, that human capital can fill the seat and help diversify the economy. In the case of Qatar, the World Cup was like the IPO for a modern nation. And now they have world-class infrastructure and they're developing a thesis to try to bring businesses and people into the country. And in the case of the UAE, they have a first mover advantage as the business headquarters for so many different multinational corporations. And they actually are trying to kind of, one, have a first mover advantage as the business headquarters for so many different multinational corporations. And they actually are trying to kind of one maintain that first

mover advantage, but two, they have kind of a once in a generation technological moment with generative AI to really play a global leadership role in science and technology, which is what they want. And so these countries, they're just not the same as they used to be. I always tell people in the business community who haven't spent time there, you know, you can't go there anymore with a thesis that these people just have a lot of capital and you need to go there and fundraise. They've had a metamorphosis. These countries, you know, have huge global ambitions.

They have the wealth to be able to deploy against their own ambitions. They have an endless supply of businesses and people who are coming to them wanting to partner. So they just have leverage that they didn't have in the past. And so I think it's sometimes helpful. Yes, they're sovereign countries, but it's sometimes helpful also to think of them as Saudi and Qatar Inc. and UAE Inc. And you've also written, you published a very important piece, which I'll post in the show notes. A little over a year ago, you of goldman the this paper on what you called geopolitical swing states so you you took the nomenclature of american political punditry and analysis about

swing states meaning states within the united states that are kind of battleground states could go either way in a presidential election there's usually just a handful of them and you applied it to the global geopolitical swing states or swing nations, nations that could go either way in, I guess what you mean is siding with the West or siding against the West, and they're in play. And they really matter. And by the way, for those who are following Israel, I mean, I know your focus was in Israel, but I was struck by that because some of the countries you wrote about are very relevant to these alliances that Israel has been cultivating over the last number of years. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely. There are a couple of reasons why I ended up kind of coming up with this geopolitical swing states theme. The first is I found the whole terminology around the global south just not that useful. You know, you're talking about the vast majority of the world, and there's a hierarchy that's developing within that global South. And so I wanted something that was more prescriptive. But the other is, now that we've, again, moved away from war on terror framework to return of great power competition, you see the US and China as the two winners from hyperglobalization, and you realize neither of them are happy with the outcome. The US finds itself, despite all

of its aspirations to decouple and diversify, unable to extricate itself from a reliance on China for a number of geopolitically important supply chains. And China, for all of its aspirations to revise the liberal international order, finds itself still reliant on a world where the dollar is the global reserve currency for the foreseeable future. And I don't think this is the Cold War. You've never had a situation, at least in the US's case, where its most formidable adversary was also its third largest trading partner. And so the two countries are inextricably linked. And they're locked in a great power competition that looks more like a competitive coexistence where neither side can gain the upper hand without relying on other

countries, because there's no international organization or superpower that's able to arbitrate the tensions between the two countries. And so what happens is as they're courting other countries, and as each country needs other partners, both politically, geopolitically and commercially, there's a certain category of countries that look at a US.S.-China tension that is persisting as perhaps a fleeting moment, but a huge economic opportunity. And these are countries that have a differentiated part of the supply chain. They have a differentiated amount of abundant capital and the flexibility to deploy it wherever

they want. They're attractive for nearshoring, offshoring, and friendshoring. And they're led by an individual, young or old, who has a global agenda that they're pursuing that's independent of Washington and Beijing. And these geopolitical swing states, this isn't like the Cold War where you had a non-aligned movement. They're not blocking together. They're really being much more multi-aligned. And you see this even with some of the U.S.'s closest allies. So if you look at India, when Russia invaded Ukraine, people forget the U.S. was trying to couch this as the great battle between democracy and autocracy. That's a very hard thing to do when the world's largest democracy, India,

decides to stay neutral. And India stayed neutral throughout this war. They've not really sort of borne any consequence as a result of doing that. They've increased trade with Russia 400%. They're buying Russian crude for $12 a barrel. They're buying it in rupees that the Russians don't need that they then have to turn back and buy things in India that they also don't need. And so India has benefited tremendously by staying neutral in this war. And so the Middle Eastern countries, you know, the wealthy Gulf countries, to me, the three of them, along with India, are kind of the ultimate geopolitical swing states. And you're seeing Saudi Arabia and India, I think, emerge as two of the premier leaders within the global South. But you're also seeing countries like the UAE find

themselves in an interesting leadership role around artificial intelligence, where for countries that don't want to rely on the U.S. for technological infrastructure, but also don't want to rely on the U.S. for technological infrastructure, but also don't want to rely on China, you're seeing a country as small as the UAE and the Gulf emerge as kind of a third option. And so these countries are making significant moves right now. They're not on their own going to be able to be able to curtail either U.S. or China's activities, but they're asserting themselves. They're gaining meaningful economic advantage. And particularly when you look at a war like the

one that's playing out in the Middle East right now, they're proving incredibly relevant and incredibly consequential. So India, to me, is the most interesting because from Israel's perspective, India had virtually no relationship with India for decades. India was the architect of the non-aligned movement in the UN for decades, which was this block of countries in the General Assembly that tried to orchestrate boycotts against Israel, support bad, you know, hostile resolutions passed in the General Assembly against Israel. And then Modi comes to power, and Modi pushes through a real, like, 180- degree flip in terms of its relationship with Israel Modi visits Israel Netanyahu at the time I think it was 2017 visits India and this relationship

between Israel and India blossoms your point is like India's just placing bets all over the place right in this particular case they have reasons to believe that the Israel relationship is worth putting their chips down on. And I'm sure the U.S. is pleased with that. But the U.S. should be careful because to your point, Russia, Ukraine, they can be completely on the other side. Yeah, I think it's even simpler than that, which is India right now has an economic agenda. And because of this phenomenon with the rise of geopolitical swing states, for which I

think they're the most significant, they're able to pursue that agenda partially unshackled from geopolitical constraints. They've just not been in that situation before. And so it's an interesting situation where their economic advantages and Modi's ambition, it gives them some geopolitical wiggle room, which in turn yields them greater economic advantage. And it's just kind of a cycle. And you see this playing out again with the Gulf countries. And it gets back to the point about ideology. When it comes to economics, these countries are proving much less ideological than we've seen them in the past. When they were completely constrained by geopolitics, it was easy to understand why ideology governed so much. But at a time where it's economic interests that are top of mind for each of these countries, the ideology is a variable,

but it's not a dominant feature. Okay. I want to now, it will sound like we're pivoting away from talking about Israel and the world, but we're actually going to come back to it in a very specific way in a moment. But before we do, I want to ask you about your most recent book called Life After Power, Seven Presidents and the Search for Purpose Beyond the White House. This is one of a number of New York Times bestselling books that you have authored. This is your most recent one. It is excellent. I read this. I read a draft of it

when you were working on it. My first question is, why did you write it? So I've always been interested in presidential history. But the reason I chose to write this book is everybody is always asking the question, what's next? The most annoying question, especially when you start a new job. I joined Goldman Sachs a year and a half ago. Within a week, people were saying, what do you think you'll do after Goldman? I said, I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out where the cafeteria is. But it's this persistent question that a world of hyper-ambitious people is continuously burdened by. And I was just really curious, how do the people who kind of go through the most dramatic transition in the world grapple with this question? So there's no more dramatic transition in the world than the president

of the United States, right? And so I wanted to figure out how do they ponder what's next? Because you kind of can't do better than that unless you're Grover Cleveland and you come back and do the presidency again. But even in his case, he found it was a cautionary tale and never as sweet the second time around. So I wanted to dig into this. And initially, I thought it was going to be a history book. What I found is the learnings from these individuals who come down from the political stratosphere and return to civilian life are so prescriptive for the rest of us. And you take these seemingly unrelatable people and you make their stories something that the rest of us. And you take these seemingly unrelatable people and you make their story something that the rest of us can learn from. And you realize there's a missing piece of history

that we would all benefit from. And so I cover seven different presidents. And I do Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush. And I picked those seven because they were the only seven worth writing about. This is the thing that I think is kind of amazing of the 45 men who served as president 46 times. Most of them had a pretty uneventful post-presidency. And the seven that I wrote about, it's not a ranking of ex-presidents, but each of these seven presidents, they were successful, not because they necessarily achieved something greater, but they found a greater sense of purpose than the journey that brought them to the White House or during their time as president. And Dan, you know this, you've written a lot of books, they take a long time to write. And so the context in which you're writing it also changes. When I started

writing this book, I didn't realize democracy might be in peril. And, you know, Alexander Hamilton, you know, in the Federalist Papers, Federalist 72, he worried about, the founding fathers worried about this question of what to do with ex-presidents. And he asked the question, does it benefit the security and well-being of the republic to have half a dozen men at any given times who were present in the United States wandering around the rest of us like discontented ghosts? And you fast forward more than 200 years later, and the founders were right to be worried. And we kind of have an answer to Hamilton's question, which is they can either be partners to their successors, or they can be their successors, most formidable adversary and

fiercest opponent, and everything in between. And so I wanted to use the transition and the idea of an ex-president, which, by the way, is unique to democracies. You know, authoritarian systems don't really, I mean, they don't really have ex-presidents, or if they do, it's not in the same way. They either get killed or they die of natural causes, but they don't lose elections. And so I think the story of democracy is not just a story of those who rose to lead and how they led. I think it's a story of what those who led did afterwards. And I wanted to tell that story. So, I mean, just for our listeners to understand, it is striking because you take these people

who in a sense are the least relatable to any of us and you make their stories. I mean, their histories as presidents and post-presidents is in a sense not relatable, but their decision-making about what to do next or can I ever leave this powerful position in order to go do something else and still have impact? That is very relatable. It is very accessible. And so you kind of penetrate their thinking and it raises a bunch of practical questions I think is that are relevant to any one of us. But I want to ask you a question about a president you left out, because that's as interesting to me as the president that you included. And one president that I have always been fascinated by is the 37th president, which is Richard Nixon.

And one of the things that is fascinating about him is his post-presidency. Stephen Ambrose wrote this, you know, one of his biographers wrote a three-volume biography of Nixon. And the third volume is called Ruin and Recovery. And it focuses on 1973 to 1990, meaning when he was leaving office, and then what he did during those couple of decades to rehabilitate his reputation. One could make the case that you can't rehabilitate Nixon's reputation, but he did become, even with his complicated legacy, he did become viewed as sort of senior statesman, geopolitical strategist.

He'd travel around the world. He'd meet with presidents and prime ministers. I remember being a young intern on Capitol Hill when Nixon came, having just returned from a trip to Russia. And Bob Dole was the Senate leader, Republican leader at the time. And he hosted a caucus lunch with all the Republican senators for Nixon. This is in the early 90s. And Nixon was there holding court on what was happening with the U.S.-Russia relations. And there was there holding court on what was happening with the US-Russia relations. And there was life after power for Richard Nixon. Why did you leave him out? So the two presidents that I get asked about the most that I did not include are Nixon and Ulysses Grant. You explained Nixon. The reason people wanted me to include Grant is he wrote the

first presidential autobiography. And it's kind of the gold standard for presidential biographies. The reason I didn't include Nixon is because I included Herbert Hoover. And I mentioned each chapter is a different sort of archetype or blueprint for how to do this. And the story of Herbert Hoover is a story of recovery. And when I compare and contrast what Hoover did versus what Nixon did, they're not even close. So Herbert Hoover is a man who lived to be 90 years old. He's defined by three and a half years of the Great Depression on his watch. Before Herbert Hoover was president, he was the great humanitarian who fed the world after World War I.

He led relief efforts after the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927. He was known as a great business leader who had risen from being an orphan to a self-made millionaire. He had bipartisan appeal. And when he wins the election in 1928, he basically waltzes into the White House in one of the most lopsided victories in history, revered by both parties. And post Great Depression, when he loses the election in 1932, he loses by one of the greatest landslides in American history. And Herbert Hoover, he ends up losing his name. He loses his job. He loses his platform. He loses his status as a great humanitarian. He loses his status as a great businessman. He loses his status

as a bipartisan figure. And the Roosevelt presidency, which lasted 12 years, felt like the never-ending presidency. And he went into this self-imposed political exile. And Herbert Hoover's entire 32-year post-presidency is a story of recovering that which he had lost. And in his post-presidency, Truman resurrects him after FDR dies, and he once again feeds the world after World War II, becoming the great humanitarian again. He once again becomes a great executive, reorganizing the executive branch of government under a Democrat, Harry Truman, and then under a Republican,

Dwight Eisenhower. And he achieves a bipartisan status again when in 1960, after John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon, Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, calls on Herbert Hoover as the most esteemed bipartisan figure to reconcile the two men because the country needs to show a united front in the Cold War. And what people don't realize about Hoover is he recovers his good name in his lifetime. It gets trampled upon again posthumously. But Hoover's story to me is a real story of recovery. And what I loved about it is it's only when he decides that he's not going to try to enter public office again and run for president again that he unburdens himself from this feeling that he was upset or anguished

by the fact that he lost the presidency. That's not what anguished him. What anguished him was to use sort of Arthur Brooks's line, he was a man who needed to be needed and wanted to be of service. And that's the thing that he wanted to get back. And it's just a very different story to me than that of Nixon. Okay, so now I want to apply this to Israel. And I should note that Bougie Herzog, the president of Israel, is reportedly, according to the Jerusalem Post, reading your book right now, which is an interesting move for a guy who should be nowhere near transitioning from power. So it's noteworthy who is reading your book, who's currently serving in public life anywhere. That's kind of interesting.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history. He's the only prime minister I know of in any kind of parliamentary democracy that has managed to return to power two times after the first premiership. So he served as prime minister from 96 to 99. Then he gets elected then he gets he loses his re-election to ahud barak then he comes back in 2008 gets elected forms a government late 2008 early 2009 and then serves through end of basically end of 2021 beginning of 2022 then you have the short-lived government led by naftali bennett and Yair Lapid and a number of other parties. And then Netanyahu comes back into power at the beginning of 2023

for his third term. So some former prime ministers returned to power once. I don't think there's any example I know of, at least in Western, as I said, in Western democracies, where someone returns twice. I asked Netanyahu about this when he first got elected, this time in a podcast conversation, and he can find no other examples. So I'm taking his word for it. I sometimes think what his legacy would have been and what his post-prime minister life would have been had he not run a third time. In other words, if you look at the period from when he was elected, kind of 2008, when he was elected of the middle of his three terms, the 2008 until basically end of 21, early 22, the Israeli economy was flourishing, GDP growth per capita rising and rising, rising,

the tech boom continues. The Abraham Accords, regardless of what one thinks about it, he pretty systematically and strategically moved the world's attention on an outside-in approach to Israeli Arab normalization rather than inside-out, meaning instead of Israeli-Palestinian to focus on the Israeli-Arab normalization, I think start to focus the world's attention on the threat from Iran. He had a lot, he had quite a legacy. And then he comes back into power and basically it's defined so far by judicial reform in 2023, which was a very divisive period as we talked about earlier.

And then October 7th happens on his watch. First question is, do you think it was a mistake for him to come back? But I guess the bigger question is, for someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, which I think is the case for a lot of the people you profile, when they're in these positions of power, they can't imagine not being in these positions of power. So it's very hard for them to transition to, I've got to build a new life. I've got to think about my role outside. They can't imagine not being in these positions of power. So it's very hard for them to transition to I've got to build a new life. I've got to think about my role outside. They can't imagine themselves in any other role. And I think Netanyahu in his mind is he was like kind of born to be prime minister and anything else, no matter how impactful it could be, was just totally foreign

to him. And I think he could have had a lot of impact, by the way, outside of government. Yeah, I mean, look, it's very, when you have that much power, it's hard to give it up with each of these presidents, you you tell yourself a story that you want to do this, this and that. And then you leave office and your life is for lack of a better way of putting it's boring. You're dealing with mundane people problems, you're dealing with your finances, broken relationships, you don't have the ability to influence as much you You read the paper and you have lots of opinions and you don't know what's going on. I mean, this is a chronic problem, regardless of whether you're the leader of the free world in the United States or the prime minister of Israel. What's interesting is

Jimmy Carter, after he lost in 1980, made an immediate decision that he wasn't going to try to make a comeback. And he decided if he can't be president for life, he's going to be a former president for life. And he created kind of the never ending former presidency. That's a path. And he made it he made a decision that he was just going to be a thorn in the side to Democrats and Republicans alike. And he didn't really care. Right. So that was one approach. I think the interesting way I would answer your question about was it a good idea for Netanyahu to come back is to reflect on an area where I think I have some expertise with the Cleveland case study. So Grover Cleveland throws away the presidency in 1888, staying principled on the tariff. He wanted to keep a high tariff.

And he said he knew he was throwing away the presidency, and he said he'd never been happier than when he did it because he said, what's the point of being president if you don't stand for something? And he had a young wife, and he wanted to start a family, and he had no intention of coming back. But what happened to Cleveland, by the way, he never lost the popular vote. He just lost the electoral college. But what happens to a lot of these individuals when you lose the power is you watch what's happening to the country, and you disagree with it. You watch your legacy getting dismantled, and you start to tell yourself, only I am able to right the ship. So in Cleveland's case, he was worried about runaway spending. He was worried about cheap money winning out over sound money and going off the gold standards. He was worried about the rise of jingoism and imperialism. And instead of looking at a sea of

alternatives, he decided only he could do it. And he decides to make a comeback. Everything looked fine, even at the time of the election. And then by the time he took office and took the oath of office in March of 1893, he inherited the worst economic crisis in the country's history. A group of American settlers had dethroned the Hawaiian queen and annexed the islands. He had inherited a bunch of machine politics and other sort of complicated issues that weren't around the first time around. And his second presidency was much less successful than his first one. And by the time he left office for the second time, he was less popular than he'd ever been. He was more

unhappy than he'd ever been. His legacy was more pounced upon than it had ever been. And finally, towards the end of his life, somebody asked him, what should we do with ex-presidents? And he said they should be taken out to a five acre lot and shot. And then he corrects himself and he says in second thought, a five acre lot is far too big and they shouldn't be shot because a former president has already suffered way too much. That was 1897, you know, 1898 humor. But the point that I take away from Cleveland is it is very hard to do a comeback and have it go better the second time than it did the first. And what happens is in business, you look at Steve Jobs as a success story. You look at Michael Jordan in sports as a successful comeback. But we forget about Michael Jordan's third comeback, which was less successful.

And so a comeback is already a risky venture because it's rarely as sweet the second time. A third comeback is really putting things to chance if it went well the second time around. And so people get tired of the same individuals being in charge in democracies, right? If you look at even the U.S. election right now, you have two candidates who are the oldest candidates in American history that are both incredibly unpopular. And they're rivaled only by what happened four years ago when they were slightly younger than they are today. And this is the first presidential rematch, the only presidential rematch that we've had other than the one that I referred to in 1892. And so why are we in that situation? It's because you have

two individuals in the U.S. that don't want to give up power. All right. Well, that's really depressing. Yeah, this term I never thought I'd hear, this term of what the analyst class is calling double haters, which is voters who hate both Biden and Trump. And then it's just a matter of each campaign is trying to figure out which of those voters hate one candidate slightly less than the other. The problem with that is it means that there aren't really undecided voters in this election. It means that what people are undecided about is whether they're going to vote or not.

Right. And I'm hearing that more and more, by the way, is people are just saying like, I'm out. And by the way, and you travel around the world, I'm always struck what I hear from capitals, you know, when I travel around the world, they say, OK, 2020, we get it. Biden versus Trump. But, you know, that was once. But you guys can do this a second time. Something's really wrong with your country. All right, Jared, we will leave it there. Thank you. The book is Life After Power. We will post a link to it in the show notes. We'll

also post a link to the Goldman note that I was referring to that Jared authored. And I look forward to having you back. Great. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it. That's our show for today. To keep up with Jared Cohn, you can find him on X at Jared Cohn. And you should also order a copy of his most recent book, Life After Power, which we'll link to in the show notes. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.